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Paradise Lost: Bk IV

Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 9:17 am
by Saffron
Book IV Discussion

Please use this thread to discuss Book IV of Paradise Lost

Produce this! Mr./Ms. movie mogul

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:59 am
by DWill
Robert Tulip inspired me with his discovery of the PL movie project. To inject a little more interest into the discussion, why don't we give some of our own views on how we'd set up Book IV for filming? If we are the film's producers, what decisions do we start to make (director, casting, special effects, plot and theme, etc.)? Book IV is very visual, of course, but it also is where the present-tense action really starts. No need to remain strictly faithful to the poem, either. For example, if the way Milton presents women starts your blood boiling, how might you give him his comeuppance? Have fun with it.

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 3:11 pm
by Ibid
Wow, how excruciating was this book? I still haven't finished it. I'm embarassed to say that I'm being very tempted (pun intended) to skip on to book V.
What a pointless bore! Seems that this book must have been included just to get to the total of 12 total books.

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:32 pm
by Thomas Hood
Ibid wrote:Wow, how excruciating was this book? I still haven't finished it. I'm embarassed to say that I'm being very tempted (pun intended) to skip on to book V.
What a pointless bore! Seems that this book must have been included just to get to the total of 12 total books.
Hold on there, Ibid! You're trashing a classic! But I admire all the hard work you're doing. When I complained that Paradise Lost was going to be heavy lifting, our now Discussion Leading said I could hang loose and come along for the ride (that's how I took it anyway), and haven't done much sequential reading. I have scanned it forword and, today, backward, and read secondary sources, and looked up allusions and parallels and history -- and I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Book IV with all its nudity scenes is going to give the movie an X rating :)

Tom

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 7:32 pm
by DWill
Ibid wrote:Wow, how excruciating was this book? I still haven't finished it. I'm embarassed to say that I'm being very tempted (pun intended) to skip on to book V.
What a pointless bore! Seems that this book must have been included just to get to the total of 12 total books.
The good thing about discussions here is that no one has to (or should feel they have to) affect a reverent attitude toward a classic if they don't feel it. Samuel Johnson quipped that PL was a hard book to pick up again once you'd finished with it. I can understand these reactions. It's certainly very different from any other work called an epic. That difference might sit well with some, but not with others. Almost no one reads the whole thing anymore, not even English lit grad students. There is that statement I referenced from Walter Raleigh, that PL is a monument to dead ideas. I wanted to gather views on whether that is so, and whether, if it is so, there is something to salvage nevertheless.

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 7:40 pm
by DWill
Thomas Hood wrote: Hold on there, Ibid? You're trashing a classic! But I admire all the hard work you're doing. When I complained that Paradise Lost was going to be heavy lifting, our now Discussion Leading said I could hang loose and come along for the ride (that's how I took it anyway), and haven't done much sequential reading. I have scanned it forword and, today, backward, and read secondary sources, and looked up allusions and parallels and history -- and I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Book IV with all its nudity scenes is going to give the movie an X rating :)Tom
When are we going to see the results of this forward and backward scanning, Tom? Is there something to be revealed by PL in reverse, like the Beatles' White album? :roll: I was thinking the same thing about the PL movie treatment of Bk IV, kinda sexy. You said that Milton broke with the Puritans (or maybe more with the Catholics) on the connubial bliss front. It's not so obvious to us today that saying sex is not sinful is bold speaking.

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:06 pm
by Thomas Hood
DWill wrote:There is that statement I referenced from Walter Raleigh, that PL is a monument to dead ideas. I wanted to gather views on whether that is so, and whether, if it is so, there is something to salvage nevertheless.
I just went to Gutenberg and downloaded Sir Walter Raleigh's book on Milton:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/21677

That's Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861-1922), AKA "Dead Ideas" Raleigh: "The _Paradise Lost_ is not the less an eternal monument because it is a monument to dead ideas." I think the ideas are dead only to the unimaginative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Raleigh_(professor)

Now I have something else to read besides the purgatory of Paradise Lost :)

Also, _Peter Ramus and Educational Reformation of the sixteenth century_, 1912, by Frank Pierrepont Graves is a Google Book and very readable.

Tom

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 9:55 am
by DWill
Thomas Hood wrote: That's Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861-1922), AKA "Dead Ideas" Raleigh: "The _Paradise Lost_ is not the less an eternal monument because it is a monument to dead ideas."
Context is everything. Thanks for bringing it out.
I think the ideas are dead only to the unimaginative.
For a moment I thought this was Raleigh speaking and not you. I reserve judgment right now. I do tend to see some of the theological foundation as dead.

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 11:42 am
by Thomas Hood
DWill wrote:
Thomas Hood wrote:
I think the ideas are dead only to the unimaginative.
For a moment I thought this was Raleigh speaking and not you. I reserve judgment right now. I do tend to see some of the theological foundation as dead.
Raleigh say this of Milton:

"The close-wrought style of Milton makes the reading of _Paradise Lost_ a
hard task in this sense, that it is a severe intellectual exercise,
without relaxation. The attention that it demands, word by word, and line
by line, could not profitably be given to most books; so that many
readers, trained by a long course of novel-reading to nibble and browse
through the pastures of literature, find that Milton yields little or no
delight under their treatment, and abandon him in despair."


Speaking of the dead, Sir Walter's prose could be used by the CIA
for verbal waterboarding:

"And yet, with however great reluctance, it must be admitted that the
close study and admiring imitation of Milton bring in their train some
lesser evils. Meaning may be arranged too compactly in a sentence; for
perfect and ready assimilation some bulk and distention are necessary in
language as in diet [ :) ]. Now the study of Milton, if it teaches anything,
teaches to discard and abhor all superfluity. . . ."

This to me yields little or no delight :)

Tom

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:41 pm
by Robert Tulip
Ibid wrote:Wow, how excruciating was this book? I still haven't finished it. I'm embarassed to say that I'm being very tempted (pun intended) to skip on to book V. What a pointless bore! Seems that this book must have been included just to get to the total of 12 total books.
No way! This book may be a grind to read, but it is intense and powerful. I finished it yesterday, and found it tough but compelling. We get Satan asking himself why destroy something of such beauty as the earth, and rationalising his purpose of revenge on God by placing man in thrall to himself. We get the dumb angels, easily tricked by the wily demon. We get the question why God needed to place military guard on earth, when they all thought the battle of heaven was over and Satan was safely locked behind the gates of hell. My nagging question on the predestination front is that God chose to lock Satan in hell, knowing that he would get out and wreak mischief. It all gets back to evil being part of the divine plan of the greater good, sent to test and prove the mettle of the creation. Satan plonking on the tree of life as a cormorant, changing into all the animals to spy out the chink in the armour, and then squat like a toad at Eve's ear. Rather like our poisonous cane toads in Australia, which look like frogs but kill anything that bites them.